India’s Agricultural Trade-Policies and Patterns:An Analysis of Selected Food Commodities

The policy environment for Indian agriculture since the early-1990s has witnessed considerable changes from broad-based economic reforms launched in 1991, to the signing of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture in 1994, leading to a series of reforms in agricultural trade policies. These changes were accompanied by first a sharp decline in international prices of several agricultural commodities, particularly after 1997, which reached almost 25-year low levels around year 2000, and then reversal in trend afterwards with rapid increase from 2004 onwards. As the period represents the two different scenarios in world prices/agriculture, the paper seeks to analyse how India has maintained a balance in its twin objectives of food policy, i.e., to maintain the domestic supply in order and keep the price at reasonable level in respect of four commodities, namely, wheat, rice, edible oils and sugar, following the progressive liberalisation of trade.